Photo by William Iven on Unsplash

Twitter: global prairie or digital village?

What is happening with Twitter? How’s it developing? What’s the future? Is it the largest real-time conversation the human race has ever put together, or is it a parochial tool for water-cooler gossip?

Let’s start back in the ancient days when Twitter was a NEW THING. I tried it out, didn’t get it, passed over it. Less a tweet, more a quack, I thought.

Then I re-tried it when Twitter was THE THING, around about 2010. Got it, assiduously followed my email contact list, plus, you know, random people for the hell of it, random other people for the influencer factor, then random people that they followed, then discovered side-lists and #hashtags and… and before I knew I was over-whelmed by the speed of my timeline.

And by the way, this is not about the basics of using Twitter, if interested in that, check out the excellent Mom This is How Twitter Works from Jessica Hische or the hilariously clunky What Twitter is Used For which patiently explains in dad-speak that people can, you know, communicate between different countries! Ok, not that article. Time is short.

But the thing was, I was trying to keep up, and the one thing you can’t do is keep up. I felt like a hamster on a wheel. So I gave up on Twitter.